Elon Musk, the new Twitter owner is trying everything in his power to make more money at the social media company. He and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages and adding 'paywalled' videos, reported The New York Times.
Paid direct messages would enable you to send out private messages to high-profile users. The plans for this are still fluid and there is no guarantee if it will launch.
Whereas, paywalled videos would stop users from viewing or accessing all videos as it would block certain videos behind a paywall. There have also been discussions on reviving Vine that would attract younger audiences and advertisers.
The other method that Musk spoke about is the 'blue check' verification program that will turn into a subscription service for $8.
With so many developments it is obvious to understand the amount of pressure on Musk to deliver immediate results for immediate returns. So in order for this to happen he has to boost Twitter's revenue and cut costs.
Musk has already started ordering job cuts across the company. On Wednesday a link to a severance calculation was posted by an employee and if those are true then approximately 3,738 employees which is almost 50 percent of Twitter's workforce will be fired.
Read more: Twitter sued as mass layoffs begin, company in violation of WARN Act
Musk is also trying to minimize the company's infrastructure costs.
Twitter is currently facing many difficulties in earning revenues despite the takeover by Musk. In fact many advertisers have backed out and paused advertising. This includes company's like Audi as they have concern regarding the content moderation.
But Twitter's new owner in an onstage interview at the TED Conference in April said that he wasn't interested in making money when it came to Twitter so he did not care about the economics of it all. But a lot has changed since then as the economy is now going through inflation and recession. Due to the high interest rates digital advertising has gone down directly impacting Twitter’s income.
With so much pressure on Musk we still need to see what further changes will be made to the microblogging platform.
